MEDiterranean Database

During the making of the second edition of the volume "Mediterranean Economies", the Annual Report of ISSM on the Mediterranean, it was also prepared a Second Edition of the Database held by the Institute. This database is not only an updating of the previous one but also a radical improvement of it, not only in terms of the quality of the tables, notes and sources, but also of the time span covered and of the content, which was enlarged, to include two new fields, such as financial statistics and statistics on energy, which were a serious deficiency in the previous database. This database, while preserving its internal function, also seeks to satisfy a demand for Mediterranean statistics, offering an updated selection of the most significant social, economic, environmental and energy data to whoever may be interested, in a convenient format (Excel tables), easily accessible and downloadable. As in the previous edition, data have been organised both by country and by Mediterranean sub-regional areas. The classification adopted follows the one introduced by the European Commission in the Europe2000+ Report, which, on the basis of geo-morphological data, divides the Mediterranean into six environmental areas: Latin Rim (Q1); Adriatic Valley (Q2); North African Front (Q3); Libyan-Egyptian Bend (Q4); Middle Eastern Facade (Q5); Anatolian-Balkan Bridge (Q6). Under the term "Latin Rim" are grouped the European Mediterranean countries, with the exception of Greece, and Malta; in the Adriatic Valley, Albania and the ex-Yugoslavian Republics; in the North African Front, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia; in the Libyan-Egyptian Bend, Libya and Egypt; in the Middle Eastern Façade, Israel and its bordering countries, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine; finally, in the Anatolian-Balkan Bridge are included Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. The time-span varies according to the statistics considered and to the most recent data available when the updating was completed (end of 2005). When it was possible, we tried to go back to the previous decades. The demographic data cover the longest period (from 1950); most economic statistics are taken from 1980, but some of them only cover the latter 15 years or the latest available data. As far as the statistical sources are concerned, we have given priority to international sources which offer greater reliability and comparability. In Chapter 1, related to POPULATION (population, density, demographic projections, last census), we made use of two databases from the World Bank: the Health, Nutrition and Population Indicators database and the World Development Indicators database; for the demographic projections we used: World Urbanization Prospects, UN, 2003; for census data: UN, Statistics division, Population and Housing Census Dates. Chapter 2, devoted to OTHER DEMOGRAPHIC STATISTICS (fertility, birth and death rate, child mortality, life expectancy) was mainly based on World Bank, Health, Nutrition and Population Indicators database. The collection of data on MIGRATION, in chapter 3, has proved more complex and fragmentary. For the stock of foreign population the data are taken from OECD International Migration Data, and the OECD database on immigrants and expatriates, while for the employment sector of immigrants they were taken from Trend in International Migration, Annual Report, 2003. As for the economic statistics, World Bank is one of the main sources, together with OECD, WTO, IMF, UNCTAD and Eurostat In particular, for data on NATIONAL ACCOUNTS (chapter 4), such as gross domestic and national product, GDP expenditure, GDP by economic sectors, gross capital formation, we used both World Bank, World Development Indicators database and IMF, World Economic Outlook. For data on FOREIGN TRADE and INVESTMENT in